Has anyone ever had a high Reverse T3?

[Black Beard]

I'm not sure if this is the same thing, but I recently was diagnosed with Grave's disease. Basically, it's a hyperactive thyroid. I had absolutely NO energy or strength, my cardio was non existent, sweating all the time in air conditioned rooms, I lost 20-25lbs in roughly 4-6 weeks, my memory was off, and my heart was beating like crazy. I thought I had cancer! I went to my primary and he admitted me to the hospital for a few days. They ran x-rays, MRI's, etc... and that's what they found. I'm om methimazole and propanolol and am doing much better.

Nothuman has hypo symptoms. The equivalent autoimmune disease is called Hashimoto's. So it's the exact opposite. They do have overlapping symptoms though like fatigue, muscle weakness and brain fog.

Grave's disease is autoimmune hyperthyroidism. Hashimoto's is autoimmune hypothyroidism.

 

[nothuman]

I'm not sure if this is the same thing, but I recently was diagnosed with Grave's disease. Basically, it's a hyperactive thyroid. I had absolutely NO energy or strength, my cardio was non existent, sweating all the time in air conditioned rooms, I lost 20-25lbs in roughly 4-6 weeks, my memory was off, and my heart was beating like crazy. I thought I had cancer! I went to my primary and he admitted me to the hospital for a few days. They ran x-rays, MRI's, etc... and that's what they found. I'm om methimazole and propanolol and am doing much better.

Wow, sounds awful. Definitely not my symptoms though. Glad you feel better.

 

[nothuman]

Are you on any thyroid hormone? The trick is to get Free T4 to top of the range if symptoms are still present, temp is low and Free T3 low, add some T3.


A healthy thyroid secretes about 100 mcg of T4 daily and 5-8 mcg of T3 daily.


The rest of the T3 comes from conversion from T4 for a total of around 32 mcg per day from conversion+direct secretion.


Keep in mind that absorption for oral T4 ranges from 60-80% for most people and that's with strict compliance on an empty stomach without food/coffee/tea. So 100 mcg tab will net you 60-80 mcg. Some people need more and some need less to get Free T4 into the optimal range.

Thanks for those numbers because I was not aware. Thyroid health is a bit complicated to understand.

I am not on any thyroid medication. Honestly, the more I read into it and search for past results, the more I don't think this is thyroid related. There was evidence in lab results a year ago I could have lyme but my symptoms don't necessarily seem to match most lyme patients since I have no aches and pains.

That being said, I feel like it might be a good idea to optimize my thyroid until my numbers are all in range/optimal. I don't quite love my FT3 being a tad low and my FT4 a tad high, with RT3 being high. I wonder if low dose T3 would optimize my thyroid.

 

[chopsuey]

Got diagnosed with hashimoto's and my doc started me on t4 only.

We slowly upped the dose, she wouldn't test t3 or rt3, got a new doc and found out I had low free t3 and elevated rt3.

Added in 10mcg t3, than upped it to 15mcg(keeping the t4 the same)

This brought my free t3 in the top range and my rt3 came down to mid range.(I can look up the exact numbers if it helps)

Some things I noticed after doing this:

-More energy
-Temperature rose from average of 96-97 to fairly consistent 98.4-98.8 with morning temp sometimes being a bit lower(97.8ish)
-Resting pulse a bit higher
- I had a lot of headaches, seemed this helped but I did a lot of things to be more healthy at this time, so not sure if coincidence

On a side not I was fairly surprised such a small dose of t3 made a big difference. I can tell even just bumping the t3 to 25mcg per day is too much, I always feel hot, sweating and temperature averages around 99.

 

[nothuman]

Got diagnosed with hashimoto's and my doc started me on t4 only.

We slowly upped the dose, she wouldn't test t3 or rt3, got a new doc and found out I had low free t3 and elevated rt3.

Added in 10mcg t3, than upped it to 15mcg(keeping the t4 the same)

This brought my free t3 in the top range and my rt3 came down to mid range.(I can look up the exact numbers if it helps)

Some things I noticed after doing this:

-More energy
-Temperature rose from average of 96-97 to fairly consistent 98.4-98.8 with morning temp sometimes being a bit lower(97.8ish)
-Resting pulse a bit higher
- I had a lot of headaches, seemed this helped but I did a lot of things to be more healthy at this time, so not sure if coincidence

On a side not I was fairly surprised such a small dose of t3 made a big difference. I can tell even just bumping the t3 to 25mcg per day is too much, I always feel hot, sweating and temperature averages around 99.

Ignorant doctors are one of the most frustrating things in the world. They are working against us when they should be working for us. They refuse to allow their egos to think we may know something they don't.

Glad you found a good one after, but you shouldn't have even had to.

 

[Black Beard]

Got diagnosed with hashimoto's and my doc started me on t4 only.

We slowly upped the dose, she wouldn't test t3 or rt3, got a new doc and found out I had low free t3 and elevated rt3.

Added in 10mcg t3, than upped it to 15mcg(keeping the t4 the same)

This brought my free t3 in the top range and my rt3 came down to mid range.(I can look up the exact numbers if it helps)

Some things I noticed after doing this:

-More energy
-Temperature rose from average of 96-97 to fairly consistent 98.4-98.8 with morning temp sometimes being a bit lower(97.8ish)
-Resting pulse a bit higher
- I had a lot of headaches, seemed this helped but I did a lot of things to be more healthy at this time, so not sure if coincidence

On a side not I was fairly surprised such a small dose of t3 made a big difference. I can tell even just bumping the t3 to 25mcg per day is too much, I always feel hot, sweating and temperature averages around 99.

That's because your thyroid only secretes about 5-8 mcg of T3 per day. The rest comes from conversion/deiodination from T4.

 

[Black Beard]

Thanks for those numbers because I was not aware. Thyroid health is a bit complicated to understand.

I am not on any thyroid medication. Honestly, the more I read into it and search for past results, the more I don't think this is thyroid related. There was evidence in lab results a year ago I could have lyme but my symptoms don't necessarily seem to match most lyme patients since I have no aches and pains.

That being said, I feel like it might be a good idea to optimize my thyroid until my numbers are all in range/optimal. I don't quite love my FT3 being a tad low and my FT4 a tad high, with RT3 being high. I wonder if low dose T3 would optimize my thyroid.

I agree, your numbers look pretty decent. Sure Free T3 is not "optimal" but i know many people with low Free T3 who feel fine.

Were you around ticks?

You could try low dose T3, higher doses will shutdown your own production.

What are your symptoms? Fatigue mostly?

 

[Fa Seeshus]

Some of the symptoms of thyroid disorder are not energy or fat loss related. For years I have had chronic dry skin, especially on calves. No amount of lotion fixed this. When my thyroid levels were finally corrected, this issue went away completely.

 

[Black Beard]

Some of the symptoms of thyroid disorder are not energy or fat loss related. For years I have had chronic dry skin, especially on calves. No amount of lotion fixed this. When my thyroid levels were finally corrected, this issue went away completely.

Yeah, dry puffy skin is one of the symptoms i had before treatment. My doc remembers 7 years ago when i first came in how much worse my complexion was. The skin has thyroid hormone receptors and without thyroid hormone, the skin metabolism is impaired.


https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3219173/